Paul Slabolepszy’s Suddenly the Storm set in Johannesburg’s East Rand at the home of an ageing former police officer Dwayne Combrink and his much younger wife Shanell, poses the question of whether the wounds of the past can ever truly be healed.

Combative, volatile, constantly on the verge of exploding, Dwayne and Shanell Combrink are two halves of a white South African workingclass couple, living an uneasy truce as they struggle with the day-to-day trials of scraping together a living and dreaming competing dreams.

But beneath Dwayne’s angry, violent exterior lies the heartbreak that governs his attitude to life. Dwayne is a man in mourning. Shanell believes his current level of despair was sparked by the death of his childhood friend and recent work partner, Jonas, but the source of his mourning and anger lies much further back. When the elegant and self-contained Namhla Gumede, born on 16 June 1976, arrives on their doorstep seeking answers to questions that have remained buried for 40 years, Dwayne and Shanell finally find out the truth.

What starts as a smouldering dark comedy suddenly turns into a roller-coaster ride of startling revelations, rage and recrimination … before the storm finally breaks.

Paul Slabolepszy’s new play, Suddenly the Storm has won the coveted Naledi award for Best New South African Script. The play script was recently published by Wits University Press. Zakes Mda, award-winning playwright and novelist said of the play, “Slabolepszy is a master of dialect which makes his East Rand characters so authentic you could be sitting in a bar in one of these Ekurhuleni towns listening to their real-life equivalents and laughing at their jokes.”

Apart from winning the award for Best New South African Script for Slabolepszy, the play won two more awards from its six nominations at the Naledi Theatre Awards in Johannesburg, winning Best Theatre Set Design and Best Lighting Design.

Slabolepszy is an acclaimed playwright, as well as radio, television and screenwriter of more than thirty plays. A selection of his play scripts have been published by Wits University Press as Mooi Street and Other Moves. The book, a collection of six plays written between 1984 and 1993 was recently reprinted.

Veronica Klipp, publisher at Wits University Press expressed her delight in the play winning these accolades and added that Slabolepszy’s play scripts had been used by high schools learners as well as university students for many years.

Suddenly the Storm is Slabolepszy’s first new play since 2009 and marks his first return to the stage as an actor in nearly two decades.

The play will be performed with Slabolepszy in the lead role in Durban from 10 to 12 August 2017 at the Playhouse Loft Theatre.

Slabolepszy is a master of dialect which makes his East Rand characters so authentic you could be sitting in a bar in one of these Ekurhuleni towns listening to their real-life equivalents and laughing at their jokes. Through his dialect he is able to elicit real pathos in all his characters … With Slabolepszy you are always waiting for something menacing to happen, and it does in this play.
– Zakes Mda, award-winning playwright and novelist

Paul Slabolepszy’s Suddenly the Storm set in Johannesburg’s East Rand at the home of an ageing former police officer Dwayne Combrink and his much younger wife Shanell, poses the question of whether the wounds of the past can ever truly be healed.

Combative, volatile, constantly on the verge of exploding, Dwayne and Shanell Combrink are two halves of a white South African workingclass couple, living an uneasy truce as they struggle with the day-to-day trials of scraping together a living and dreaming competing dreams.

But beneath Dwayne’s angry, violent exterior lies the heartbreak that governs his attitude to life. Dwayne is a man in mourning. Shanell believes his current level of despair was sparked by the death of his childhood friend and recent work partner, Jonas, but the source of his mourning and anger lies much further back. When the elegant and self-contained Namhla Gumede, born on 16 June 1976, arrives on their doorstep seeking answers to questions that have remained buried for 40 years, Dwayne and Shanell finally find out the truth.

What starts as a smouldering dark comedy suddenly turns into a roller-coaster ride of startling revelations, rage and recrimination … before the storm finally breaks.

A seasoned war correspondent, Jeffrey Gettleman has covered every major conflict over the past twenty years, from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Congo.

For the past decade, he has served as the East Africa Bureau Chief for the New York Times, fulfilling his teenage dream of living in Africa. Love, Africa is the story of how he got there – and of his difficult, winding towards becoming a good reporter and a better man.

At nineteen, Gettleman fell in love, twice. On a community service trip in college, he went to Africa – a terrifying, exciting, dreamlike continent in the throes of change that imprinted itself on his imagination and heart. One day, he vowed, he would return there, to stay. But around the same time he also fell in love with Courtenay, a fellow Cornell student – the brightest, fiercest, kindest woman he’d ever met.

Courtenay became a lawyer in America, and all Gettleman wanted was to be with her. But he also hungered to be in Africa. For the next decade he would waver between these two abiding passions.

Finally, after a great deal of growing up, he learned to be honest with himself about what he wanted – a realization that ultimately fulfilled both of his deepest desires.

A beautifully rendered coming-of-age story in the tradition of Barbarian Days, Love, Africa is a tale of passion, professional rivalries, tortuous long-distance relationships, marital strife, forgiveness, parenthood, and happiness that explores the power of finding yourself in the most unexpected of places.

The skeleton detective is coming back to life… again! It’s the tenth, triumphant novel in the Skulduggery Pleasant series, and it will rearrange your world.

Skulduggery and Valkyrie are back in the tenth instalment in the bestselling Skulduggery Pleasant series – an incredible and unexpected treat for the legions of fans around the world.

We can’t say much but we can say this: Skulduggery and Valkyrie are going to team up with beloved characters from the first nine books as well as an all-new cast, including new teen co-star Omen Darkly, for an adventure that takes the story to truly global proportions … while answering questions that go right back to the beginning.

And Derek says this: “I was halfway through Last Stand of Dead Men, I think, when I realised that I had more stories to tell. I told myself that if Skulduggery and Valkyrie survived the series, I would leave the option open of returning to their world. There were still secrets I need to reveal, after all, and there were still horrors they had to face. They survived the first series. But they’re really going to wish they hadn’t.”

11th September 2001. Lucy and Gabe meet at Columbia University on a day that will change their lives – and the world – forever. And as the city burns behind them, they kiss for the very first time.

Over the next thirteen years they are torn apart, then brought back together, time and time again. It’s a journey of dreams, of desires, of jealousy, of forgiveness – and above all, love.

And as Lucy is faced with a decision she thought she’d never have to make, she wonders whether their love is a matter of destiny, or chance. What if they should have been living a different life all along?

Me Before You meets One Day in this passionate debut novel, The Light We Lost, an epic love story about the heartrending decision that one woman must make…

Fleeing a disastrous and humiliating arrest of her husband-to-be on the eve of their wedding, Celia Kilbride, a gems and jewellery expert, hopes to escape from public attention by lecturing on a brand-new cruise ship – the Queen Charlotte.

On board she meets eighty-six-year-old Lady Emily Haywood, “Lady Em,” as she is known throughout the world. Immensely wealthy, Lady Em is the owner of a priceless emerald necklace that she intends to leave to the Smithsonian after the cruise.

Three days out to sea Lady Em is found dead – and the necklace is missing.

The list of suspects is large and growing. Celia sets out to find the killer, not realizing that she has put herself in mortal danger before the ship reaches its final destination…

Amabookabooka, the quirky podcast devoted to interviewing local authors about their work, recently released a special edition episode.

This episode is from a previous podcast series produced by the Amabookabooka-duo, Jonathan Ancer and Dan Dewes, called Extraordinary Lives and has been released to coincide with the 109th anniversary of the birth of Bram Fischer – described by Ancer and Dewes as the South African prime minister we should have had.

Lord Joel Joffe, a human rights lawyer, who was on the legal team that defended the Rivonia Trialists in 1964 talks about Bram, whom he describes as his hero.

Fischer’s daughter, Ilse Wilson, also joins in the conversation revealing a different side to the Scarlet Pimpernel – that of Bram the father.